Upcycling is a virtue

Most will know that I am a fan of the freecycle/upcycle mantra (even if I have sometimes been know to confuse freecycling with 'liberation'...

Anyway, several months ago we had the opportunity to acquire a commercial oven range in need of some love and attention. Jane was a little dubious, but I managed to assure her that we weren't buying into a white elephant. I wish I had photographed the before, as it was truly awful. The bloke we got the oven from had originally had every intention of putting it into his cafe kitchen but it wouldn't fit. It also wouldn't fit into his garage, so it sat out in the Brisbane weather for a couple of years. 

So far, we have hit it with a rust converter to see if there was anything that survived the weather (fortunately the important parts all have), and pulled it apart to clean. The gasfitter who is working on the technical side of the refurbishment reckons we have pulled about 12-15 kg of grease out of the frame. Needless to say, it wasn't ever cleaned very well in previous incarnations, and is now a lot lighter. 

I had to replace fixed legs with castors. In this case it meant about seven hours of cutting, grinding old welds, and trying to bolt the castors through inches of decades old grease.

We have struggled to date the range, but it is old enough for the manufacturers plate to have long since worn away, and we only know the brand because I saw one like it on a restaurant equipment auction site.

If you are interested, we are now the proud owners of a (nearly put back together) 10 burner Waldorf gas kitchen range (6 burner rings, and a 4 burner hot plate) with two ovens. Needless to say, this is a little forward planning for the house build on the farm.

We are told that we will have a better oven than most built today, as it has nothing electric in it (unlike today's ovens) to break down. It is really simple, and although a little battered and beaten about has another 30 years of effective life in it. 

I took a weeks leave last week, and spent most of it upcycling the oven - but it is definitely worth it.  

Do as I say, not as I do!

Rules, guidelines and safety precautions are generally there for a reason. We try and flaunt rules where and when we can, and generally grudgingly accept that they are there to protect us.

As for me, I am a big advocate of the "closed shoes in the kitchen" rule, and am always on at Jane when she is in the kitchen in jandals (or thongs for the Australian audience!).

Imagine then how much of a twat I felt the other night when I padded into the kitchen in bare feet, and promptly knocked something off the bench. The scraper hit my toe, and I promptly let out a blood curdling yelp. Jane refused to show anything like an appropriate level of sympathy until the next day, when the toe appeared, twice the regulation size and a decided shade of puce (the photo below shows most of the colour having gone back out of the toe).

By the way - if you are wondering what an appropriate level of sympathy is for Jane, it tends to involve  near hysterical convulsions of laughter, and helpful suggestions in the order of "should have been wearing shoes, dumbass!!!". 

A photographic essay...

So... This is a collection of some of my favourite photographs of the last few months. They are not in date order, so if you are looking for some kind of chronological look at MacK over the last couple of months you might be disappointed! I will try to put a date context where I can...

This is how the farm looked when we were down in August. We had ploughed in the weeds, and planted oats and vetch to start a program of soil conditioning. It really was as good as this looks!

You can't quite see MacK, but he was very excited to be able to steer Sam and Simone's tractor. 

All of that farmwork is very tiring!

We bought a trampoline for MacK. It is one of the fancy ones without springs, and a safety net. As you can see, I was very conscientious about following the instructions... 

And the safe, finished product. MacK loves it!

This one is from a little earlier in the year (I am thinking June?), where MacK is helping me make passata  for the winter. Great fun, and we got super sticky and gooey! Not quite our own tomato festival, but something close. 

Mack loves to garden (which to him at this stage involves watering plants only). Here he is, watering Jane's pride and joy - a Euphorbia that one of the residents in the village gave her 

Doesn't every two year old cook a barbecue??

A winter catch up

Again, a catch up! I spent five weeks away for work, during which time I missed my little family like crazy. We were technically in the tropics, although Rockhampton in winter feels anything but! Sleeping on concrete slabs under canvas doesn’t always make for comfortable nights either.  This trip wasn’t too bad, as we did have (work) internet and phone access. I was able to get mobile coverage every couple of days, which meant I was able to keep up with developments on the home front too.

Jane uploaded a photograph a day to facebook so I could see how our wee man changed over the time I was away. It wasn’t only appreciated at my end, as several friends also commented on their enjoyment of the photographs. I am sure that some of them wanted me to stay away so they could continue to receive the pictures!

MacK developed a bit of a glove fetish while I was away. We think it is because he started carrying one of my motorbike gloves around after I left, and there were brilliant pictures of him eating a bowl of strawberries wearing my gloves. His “gloverobe” grew over the time I was away to include my ski gloves, a pair of pink fingerless womens exercise gloves, gardening gloves and latex washing up gloves. 

On my return, (a couple of weeks ago now) we had a busy week at work before heading to Canberra for a much needed winter break. Call us crazy, but we actually like to head to the cold! Makes the red wine much easier to drink! We also had to meet with our accountant and peg our concept house plans out on the house block. It was fantastic to see the house on the block, and to be able to walk through the floor plan.  We have decided to do a reassessment of what we might need, after the architect scared us with his initial cost estimates!!! Without scaring you also, short of winning lotto, there was no way we were ever going to build!

While down in Canberra we also had an opportunity to provide Leigh with another pheasant pheast. He again went shooting with friends in the Grampians, and came back with several brace of pheasants. This year my intention was to cook the breasts and legs separately, with a confit base for the legs. As I was putting it together the dish morphed into a much more Spanish influenced dish, with olives, preserved lemons and raisins. We slow braised the legs before serving them, and the meat just fell off the bone. The sauce was not thickened, and was wonderful to mop up off the plate. I wrapped the breast in prosciutto before searing and roasting. It was tender and moist – the kind of bird you could eat forever. I made a stock from all the carcasses (there were six), and reduced that to make a sticky, unctuous sauce. We served the birds with roast vegetables, and Brussels sprouts sautéed with bacon. Peter pulled a range of excellent wines from the cellar, and we had both cheese and soft centred chocolate pudding to finish the meal.

Since returning to Brisbane, we seem to have been extraordinarily busy with both work and play. We had an excellent evening at my cousins for a late Christmas in July, where I was very happy to pick up a bottle of Bombay Gin in the secret Santa!

We took Dad out to lunch for a lovely Father’s Day lunch  - if you are ever in Palmwoods on the Sunshine Coast, Rick’s Café serves brilliant burgers, and the beer is good too. We got wholeheartedly sick of seeing MacK jump on everything in sight, so caved and bought a trampoline for the back yard. The only problem we have now is to get him off it when it gets dark!

At work we had an athletics carnival (very schoolboy-ish, I know), and I got to compete in one of my favourite events - Tug of War. Apparently I might get a little competitive when it comes to sports I enjoy!

In the immediate future we are looking at starting to pack up the house already (there aren’t that many weeks before we have to drive again to a new location), and I promise to write more blogs! I am excited though. Jane and I have tickets to Leonard Cohen on November 30. He is an amazing poet/vocalist, and quite simply my favourite artist. It will be a fantastic night, and one where Jane and I can have a far too infrequent night out as grown ups!